French Doors near you

The scope of the federal standard is a short list: storm doors or combination doors, doors, bathtub doors and enclosures, shower doors and enclosures, and sliding glass doors of the patio type. French doors sit squarely in the second item. What the standard then does is sort them by pane size. Category I, which it also calls Class B, covers storm and combination doors and doors containing no single piece of glazing material greater than 9 square feet in surface area of one side. Category II, also called Class A, covers doors containing any piece greater than 9 square feet, alongside shower and bathtub enclosures and sliding patio doors. The Commission's findings describe Category I as the 150 foot pound impact test and Category II as the 400 foot pound test, which is why wired glass was expected to become unusable in Category II applications.

The standard also carries an exemption that speaks directly to traditional French door styling: openings in doors through which a 3 inch diameter sphere is unable to pass are exempt. Genuinely small divided lites can fall outside the requirement, while the simulated divided lites on a single large pane, which are the industry norm today, do not, because there is one piece of glazing behind the muntin bars. If the appearance of small panes matters to you, ask whether the door has real openings or a single sheet with applied grilles, because the answer changes what the glass has to be.

One more definition is worth carrying into the showroom. The standard defines laminated glass as two or more pieces bonded to an intervening layer of resilient plastic, and tempered glass as glass that cannot be cut, drilled, ground or polished after treatment without fracture, breaking into small particles when highly tempered. Both can satisfy the requirement; only one holds together when struck. Ask which one your door uses.

The ENERGY STAR Version 7.0 specification, effective October 23, 2023, states that windows, sliding glass doors and skylights meet the criteria for a given climate zone, while swinging doors meet the criteria for a given glazing level. For doors, the specification sets a U-factor of 0.17 for opaque doors with no solar heat gain rating required, 0.23 for doors with half or less glazing together with a solar heat gain coefficient of 0.23, and for doors with more than half glazing, 0.26 in the Northern and North-Central zones with a coefficient of 0.40, and 0.28 in the South-Central and Southern zones with a coefficient of 0.23. A glazed French door is firmly in the last of those rows.

Air leakage is where the hinged style pays for its advantages. The specification allows swinging doors 0.5 cubic feet per minute per square foot, against 0.3 for windows, sliding doors and skylights, demonstrated either through the air leakage portion of the temporary NFRC label or through one of the structural certification labels named in the specification. A hinged pair seals by compression across four edges and a center joint, which is a harder sealing problem than a slider's interlock, and the criteria acknowledge it. That is a reason to care about the hardware and the astragal rather than a reason to avoid French doors.

French doors are usually installed with sidelites, transoms or a run of windows beside them, and the adopted residential code treats that glass as a hazardous location under conditions it states precisely. The model code as adopted and published by Seattle sets out R308.4.1, which makes glazing in fixed and operable panels of swinging, sliding and bifold doors a hazardous location, with exceptions for glazed openings through which a 3-inch diameter sphere is unable to pass and for decorative glazing.

The adjacent glass is covered by R308.4.2. Glazing in a fixed or operable panel adjacent to a door is a hazardous location where the bottom exposed edge is less than 60 inches above the floor or walking surface and either the glazing is within 24 inches of either side of the door in the plane of the door in a closed position, or the glazing is on a wall less than 180 degrees from the plane of the closed door and within 24 inches of the hinge side of an in-swinging door. The exceptions are narrow: decorative glazing, an intervening wall or other permanent barrier between the door and the glazing, access through the door to a closet or storage area three feet or less in depth, and glazing adjacent to the fixed panel of patio doors.

Those are the provisions of one jurisdiction's adopted edition, which is exactly the point: the code that governs your house is the one your state adopted and your building department enforces, with its own amendments. Describe the layout, including the sidelites and the swing direction, to the building department and to the supplier, and have the required glazing written on the order rather than assumed.

Exterior doors had their own line in the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit, and it was smaller than most people remember. The IRS describes a maximum annual credit of 1,200 dollars for energy efficient property costs and certain improvements, with exterior doors limited to 250 dollars per door and 500 dollars in total, and windows and skylights limited to 600 dollars. Doors qualified when they met the applicable ENERGY STAR requirements, a lower bar than the Most Efficient certification that windows had to meet. For 2025, no credit was allowed unless the item was produced by a qualified manufacturer and the taxpayer reported its qualified manufacturer identification number on the return.

The credit has since closed. The IRS states that it is allowed for qualifying property placed in service on or after January 1, 2023, and before January 1, 2026, and its guidance on the modifications made by Public Law 119-21 states that the credit will not be allowed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. If a quote still carries a federal credit line for a pair of doors, ask which authority it relies on, and check what your own state or utility currently offers instead.

Two bids for the same opening usually differ on the parts of the job you cannot see from the showroom floor. The variables are the leaf size and weight and therefore the hinge and frame specification, the glazing package and whether the door is Category I or Category II under the federal standard, whether there are sidelites or a transom and what the adopted code requires of that glass, whether the swing is in or out and what the landing outside needs, the locking hardware, the condition of the sill and framing found once the old unit is out, and whether the opening itself is changing. Ask each bidder to price the hardware and the glazing as separate lines.

LokalMatch handles only the introduction. You describe the opening once, with its width, whether you want one leaf or two in daily use, which way you would like them to swing, whether there is glass beside the opening and what is happening with the current doors, and installers serving your area contact you directly. They pay LokalMatch for each request they take, and homeowners use the service free. LokalMatch does not supply or install doors, does not set or estimate prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone, so confirming the glazing category, the certified ratings and the installer's licensing and insurance remains yours.